Groove Junkies/Chuck Love/DJ Fluid - Om Summer Sessions (CD)

All Music Guide

If you've got a fourhour drive down the Pacific Coast Highway ahead of you, and you're running low on appropriate tunes, then the Om label has come to your rescue with this wellpacked, budgetpriced threedisc set of sunny, summertime club grooves. Each disc is a continuous DJ mix featuring the talents of one of three mixologists: Groove Junkies on disc one, Chuck Love on disc two and DJ Fluid on disc three. Although the househeavy tracks do tend to run together a bit by about halfway through the program, none of them is less than pleasant and a few jump out at you with particular force. Among the latter are a powerful gospel number titled "He Is" by a group with the rather strange name Copyright, Micky More's "Victory Dance" (which features some very jazzy flute playing and some wonderfully wanky wahwah guitar), Iz Diz's saucy "Magnificent", and Samantha James' 80sflavored and swooningly hooky "Rise". As she does on every compilation on which she appears, Colette steals the show with her rendition of "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On" (presented here in a new mix by Chuck Love). If you're not going to be driving down the PCH anytime soon, then you can put any one of these discs on repeat and close your eyes and pretend. Highly recommended.

- Rick Anderson, All Music Guide